Hardware Category - Page 6 of 1179 - CNX Software

March 21, 2025March 22, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 10 Comments

Mini UPS with 5V, 9V, 12V DC, and PoE output could be useful for routers, security cameras, SBCs, and mini PCs

Mini Uninterruptible Power Supply DC USB PoE

Most uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) require AC voltage and use specific batteries that must be changed every few years. But those may be oversized and not the most efficient if you just want to keep single board computers (SBCs), low-power mini PCs, routers, or security cameras up and running during power failures. Luckily, some mini UPS solutions use standard rechargeable 18650 batteries, output 5V, 9V, or 12V DC, or even PoE (15V/24V) which may be more suitable for those use cases. Many mini UPS solutions come from WGP (Wonderful Green Power), so let’s have a look at the WPG103A model. WPG103A mini UPS specifications: Batteries – 4x 18650 batteries for a combined 10,400 mAh capacity Protection – Overcharge, over-discharge, overcurrent, and short circuit protection Misc – Power button, status LEDs Power Input – 12V/2A via DC jack Power Output 5V via USB Type-A port (likely limited to 1.5A or 2A […]

March 20, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Forlinx FET3506J-S low power system-on-module features Rockchip RK3506J industrial-grade tri-core Cortex-A7 SoC

Forlinx FET3506J-S system-on-module (SoM) is based on a Rockchip RK3506J SoC, the industrial version of the RK3506 tri-core Cortex-A7 SoC, designed for smart industrial applications, and operating at a low power consumption of about 0.7 Watts. The Rockchip RK3506 SoC was first unveiled in 2023 through a product roadmap. However, we only spotted it in a product at the very end of 2024 with the Luckfox Lyra and Luckfox Lyra Plus featuring a MIPI CSI display connector and optional Ethernet. The Forlinkx FET3506J-S CPU module is the first platform with the industrial version (RK3506J), and the company also provides the OK3506 carrier board/development board for evaluation. Forlinx FET3506J-S system-on-module Specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3506J CPU 3x Arm Cortex-A7 core up to 1.5 GHz or 1.6 GHz (depending on where one looks in the documentation) Arm Cortex-M0 real-time core GPU – 2D GPU only No VPU, no NPU System Memory – […]

March 20, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Microchip AVR SD 8-bit dual-core microcontrollers offer functional safety for less than one dollar

Microchip AVR SD family of low-cost 8-bit microcontrollers (MCUs) feature built-in functional safety (FuSa) mechanisms designed to meet Automotive Safety Integrity Level C (ASIL C) and Safety Integrity Level 2 (SIL 2) requirements, both of which mandate redundant safety checks. Hardware safety features include a dual-core lockstep CPU, two ADCs for redundancy, an Error Correction Code (ECC) on all memories, a dedicated error controller module, error injection mechanisms, and voltage and clock monitors. The company further explains the AVR SD MCU meets Fault Detection Time Interval (FDTI) targets as low as 1 millisecond, and its functional safety management system has been certified by TÜV Rheinland. Microchip AVR SD specifications: MCU core – AVR CPU in Dual-Core Lockstep (DCLS) clocked at up to 20 MHz Memory – 4 KB or 8KB SRAM with ECC Storage 32 KB or 64KB in-system-programmable Flash memory with ECC 256B EEPROM with ECC 512B of user […]

March 20, 2025March 21, 2025 by Debashis Das - 5 Comments

u-blox DAN-F10N – The world’s smallest dual-band (L1/L5) GNSS module with an integrated patch antenna fits in a 4cm2 package

u blox DAN-F10N world’s smallest GNSS module

u-blox has recently announced the world’s smallest L1, L5 dual-band GNSS module with an integrated patch antenna for precise meter-level positioning in applications such as asset tracking, telematics, industrial automation, consumer UAVs, and sports trackers. The module features a compact 20x20x8mm dual-band patch antenna with a unique packaging technology, enabling surface mounting for automated manufacturing and simplified integration. Its SAW-LNA-SAW RF architecture and an LTE B13 notch filter in the L1 RF path enhance out-of-band jamming immunity, ensuring smooth operation near cellular modems. The module includes internal flash memory for firmware upgrades and supports an antenna switch function for operation with an external active GNSS antenna. DAN-F10N GNSS module specifications: Storage – Internal Flash for firmware GNSS receiver u-blox F10 engine GPS: L1 C/A, L5 QZSS: L1C/A, L1S, L1Sb, L5 Galileo: E1B/C, E5a BeiDou: B1C, B2a NavIC: L5 SBAS: L1 C/A, BDSBAS B1C Communication protocol NMEA UBX binary RTCM v. […]

March 19, 2025March 21, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 13 Comments

NVIDIA DGX Spark – A desktop AI supercomputer powered by NVIDIA GB10 20-core Armv9 SoC with 1,000 TOPS of AI performance

NVIDIA DGX Spark desktop AI supercomputer

NVIDIA DGX Spark may look like a mini PC, but under the hood, it’s a powerful AI supercomputer based on the NVIDIA GB10 20-core Armv9 SoC with Blackwell architecture delivering up to 1,000 TOPS (FP4) of AI performance, and high memory bandwidth (273 GB/s) with 128 GB 256-bit LPDDR5x. The GB10 SoC is equipped with ten Cortex-X925 cores, ten Cortex-X725 cores, a Blackwell GPU, 5th Gen Tensor cores, and 4th Gen RT cores. The system also features a 1 TB or 4TB SSD, an HDMI 2.1a video output port, 10GbE and WiFi 7 networking, and four USB4 ports. NVIDIA DGX Spark specifications: SoC – NVIDIA GB10 CPU – 20-core Armv9 processor with 10x Cortex-X925 cores and 10x Cortex-A725 cores Architecture – NVIDIA Grace Blackwell GPU – Blackwell Architecture CUDA Cores – Blackwell Generation 5th Gen Tensor cores 4th Gen RT (Ray Tracing) cores Tensor Performance – 1000 AI TOPS (FP4) […]

March 19, 2025March 20, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

The Pebble Smartwatch is back with the Core 2 Duo and Core Time 2 models running PebbleOS open-source firmware

The Pebble Smartwatch was first introduced in 2012 with a black and white e-Paper display, a week of battery life, and an amazingly successful Kickstarter company that raised over 10 million dollars. It was followed by the Pebble Time with a color display in 2015, and the Pebble 2 & Time 2 watches followed in 2016. But then it all went south from there, and Pebble’s assets were purchased by Fitbit in December 2016, all projects were canceled that year, and cloud services were discontinued in June 2018. Since then, the community has taken over working on the Rebble project to keep existing watches running, and Google acquired Fitbit in 2021. However, the project is slowly coming back to life. First, Google released the source code for the Pebble smartwatches and Pebble’s founder, Eric Migicovsky, and a team of engineers worked on reviving the project which now culminates with the […]

March 19, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

MediaTek Genio 720 and 520 AIoT SoCs target generative AI applications with 10 TOPS AI accelerator

The announcement of the MediaTek Genio 720 and Genio 520 octa-core Cortex-A78/A55 AIoT SoCs is one of the news I missed at Embedded World 2025. The new models appear to be updates to the Genio 700 and Genio 500 with a beefier NPU, and the Taiwanese company says the new Genio series supports generative AI models, human-machine interface (HMI), multimedia, and connectivity features for smart home, retail, industrial, and commercial IoT devices. Both are equipped with a 10 TOPS NPU/AI accelerator for transformer and convolutional neural network (CNN) models and support up to 16GB of LPDDR5 memory to handle “edge-optimized” (i.e. quantized) large language models (LLMs) such as Llama, Gemini, Phi, and DeepSeek, and other generative AI tasks. MediaTek Genio 720 and Genio 520 specifications: Octa-core CPU Genio 520 2x Arm Cortex-A78 up to 2.2 GHz (Commercial) or 2.0 GHz (Industrial) 6x Arm Cortex-A55 up to 2.0 GHz (Commercial) or […]

March 19, 2025 by Debashis Das - No Comments

Panasonic PAN B511-1C Bluetooth 6.0 and 802.15.4 module features castellated holes and LGA footprint

Panasonic industry has recently introduced the PAN B511-1C Bluetooth 6.0 and 802.15.4 module based on the Nordic Semi nRF54L15 SoC and designed for ultra-low-power wireless communication. The compact module integrates a chip antenna, 32MBit flash memory, two Crystals, and the Nordic nRF54L51 which provides a 128 MHz Arm Cortex-M33 microcontroller with Bluetooth 6.0 (LE), Thread, Zigbee, and Matter, along with multiple peripherals such as SPI, UART, I2S, PWM, and ADC. The PAN B511-1C also implements security features to support secure boot, secure firmware updates, cryptographic acceleration, and tamper detection, making it suitable for a range of IoT, industrial automation, smart home, medical (wearables), and battery-powered applications. PAN B511-1C module specification: SoC – Nordic Semiconductor nRF54L15 MCU cores Arm Cortex-M33 with Arm TrustZone @ 128MHz RISC-V coprocessor for software-defined peripheral Memory – 256KB SRAM Storage – 1.5MB non-volatile memory Wireless Bluetooth 6.0 Data rates – 2Mbps, 1Mbps, 500kbps, 125kbps Features AoA / […]